Add namefrom: heading. #2650

cookiecrook · 2025-10-09T00:27:46Z

Closes w3c/accname#138
Closes #1018
Closes #1860
Closes #2209
Closes w3c/accname#182
Closes w3c/accname#229

Related to #2215

Add namefrom: heading again; Will year 6 be the year?

Roles that are affected: now namefrom: author, heading:

alertdialog
article
dialog

History and Readiness:

Jon Gunderson started this change in 2019 with Issue899 accname from heading #1018.
I attempted it again in 2023 with Update from PR #1018 for nameFrom: heading #1860.
Latter PR was already reviewed/approved but had irreconcilable merge conflicts, in part due to the Monorepo shift and editorial addition of Prettier that happened in the meantime.
A few other issues and pull requests (linked above) were also filed in the meantime.
This PR (2650) supersedes 1860 which superseded 1018.
WebKit is shipping already (@rahimabdi)
WPT Tests are live.

I was worried this might never make it into the spec, but we now have:

approval from ARIA WG (including prior PR approval from @accdc, @scottaohara, and @aleventhal)
a no-conflict, single-monorepo pull request
live WPT tests
a shipping implementation (WebKit)
support from a second implementation (Chromium)
support (IIRC @keithamus?) from a third implementation (Gecko)

Please re-review and merge this ASAP before this layered PR stagnates again... Thanks!

Implementation tracking

WPT tests: https://wpt.fyi/results/accname/name/comp_name_from_heading.tentative.html
Browser implementations (link to issue or when done, link to commit):
Does this need AT implementations? No. Engine-specific change.

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cookiecrook · 2025-10-09T00:38:48Z

Tagging F2FCandidate because if this third-attempt PR (or maybe it’s the fifth?) hasn't merged by TPAC, we should lock the doors until it is.

scottaohara · 2025-10-09T13:22:23Z

@cookiecrook i had done this work as well for html aam #2215

cookiecrook · 2025-10-09T17:23:54Z

Taking a note from the WG call today to double-check the history for form and region. @rahimabdi asked for additional tests, and @mcking65 wondered if region should be left out due to a more recent spec change related to that role.

spectranaut · 2025-10-09T18:26:03Z

Discussed during triage today: https://www.w3.org/2025/10/09-aria-minutes.html#31d8

I believe @cookiecrook has some follow up tasks and we are primarily waiting for a second implementation or stronger implementation commitment.

cookiecrook · 2025-10-11T18:38:36Z

Confirmed nameFrom:heading was removed from region (and complementary FWIW) in the prior PR in this commit and determined we would address it elsewhere. Will pull that role here, too, but not yet sure wondering why the related prose remained. Probably just an oversight, so thanks Matt...

cookiecrook · 2025-10-11T18:46:55Z

Both region and form had seemingly related prose about using heading as the label. Removing it was technically an editorial change, but in the new PR, I accidentally made it substantive with the addition of namefrom: heading on those two. I will correct that error, and also NOT remove the duplicative text for the roles that should not be related to this PR, and that should resolve both Rahim and Matt's comments.

…ined in the PR comment thread

cookiecrook

Adding comments to make review easier.

cookiecrook · 2025-10-13T22:27:21Z

index.html

              </tr>
              <tr>
                <th class="role-namefrom-head" scope="row">Name From:</th>
-                <td class="role-namefrom">author</td>


Reviewer context: this is on the dialog role

cookiecrook · 2025-10-13T22:28:19Z

index.html

              </tr>
              <tr>
                <th class="role-namefrom-head" scope="row">Name From:</th>
-                <td class="role-namefrom">author</td>


Reviewer context: this is on the article role

cookiecrook · 2025-10-13T22:29:17Z

index.html

              </tr>
              <tr>
                <th class="role-namefrom-head" scope="row">Name From:</th>
-                <td class="role-namefrom">author</td>


Reviewer context: this is on the alertdialog role

accname/index.html

index.html

rahimabdi · 2025-10-15T22:10:19Z

index.html

              modal dialog design patterns.
            </p>
-            <p>Authors SHOULD provide an accessible name for a dialog, which can be done with the <pref>aria-label</pref> or <pref>aria-labelledby</pref> attribute.</p>
+            <p>Authors SHOULD provide an accessible name for a dialog, using either <a href="#namecalculation">namefrom</a>: author or <a href="#namecalculation">namefrom</a>: heading.</p>


Given a dialog that contains an <h2> for example, would it be preferable for authors to use aria-labelledby or rely on nameFrom: heading? Should nameFrom: author be preferred over nameFrom: heading?

Yes, the AccName computation prioritizes namefrom:author first... namefrom:heading is only used as a fallback.

The direct author reference is probably slightly more performant, but I don't think a change is needed here unless you have one to suggest.

Just a personal clarification to make sure I'm using this new nameFrom technique properly 😄

rahimabdi · 2025-10-15T22:19:11Z

@cookiecrook One thought that came to mind during implementation was around the descendant element with role="heading", and that it could potentially be a link or image (which is common practice) rather than just a text node. I think nameFrom: heading still applies here but should this be specified in spec (e.g., "first descendant element node matching the role of heading (including headings that contain images or links.")?

cookiecrook · 2025-10-20T22:40:25Z

Lucas, in this comment, indicated potential Q4 2025 support for Chromium/Edge.

Co-authored-by: Rahim Abdi <abdi.abdirahim@gmail.com>

cookiecrook · 2025-10-20T22:51:54Z

@rahimabdi wrote:

@cookiecrook One thought that came to mind during implementation was around the descendant element with role="heading", and that it could potentially be a link or image (which is common practice) rather than just a text node. I think nameFrom: heading still applies here but should this be specified in spec (e.g., "first descendant element node matching the role of heading (including headings that contain images or links.")?

What's special about a heading containing a an image or link that would not also apply to some other type of content? The label derived for the element that supports namefrom:heading will be the heading's label. But then that element's label will be derived from running its contents through the computation... link gets its name from author or contents... image from author via alt or aria-label. Wouldn't the same be true for any included [fill in the blank] element? If so, why the need for special mention?

This commit supersedes PR #2215

rahimabdi

LGTM 🚀

jcsteh · 2025-10-21T23:54:20Z

In general, this makes sense to me. However, I'm wondering if there has been any discussion anywhere regarding mutations, events and the performance thereof.

When the name of anything changes, the browser should ideally fire a name change event. The importance of this differs between operating systems and browser implementations, but it's still generally the right thing to do. For Firefox (and I assume Chromium), failure to fire an event could result in a stale cross-process cache, so it's particularly important there. However, clients may depend on the event as well.

There are two particular challenges here:

When the name of a heading changes, we need to potentially check to see if it's being used as the name of a NameFrom: heading element (<dialog>, etc.). Because the rules specify that we must search for the first descendant heading, this could get a bit expensive, especially if the heading is somewhat deep or far in the subtree. I guess we could cache the heading associated with a NameFrom: heading element, but that introduces its own complexity.
When a heading is moved in the tree, we need to do the same.

@rahimabdi, does WebKit fire name change events for these cases? Did you run into any issues implementing those?

I'd also be curious as to whether anyone has done any design thinking on this for Chromium and considered these issues.

Thanks!

html-aam/index.html

jcsteh · 2025-10-22T01:27:02Z

html-aam/index.html

+            </li>
+            <li>
+              If the <a data-cite="accname-1.2/#dfn-accessible-name">accessible name</a> is still empty, then: if the `dialog` element has a
+              <a href="https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#concept-tree-descendant">descendant</a> element with a role of `heading`, then use the 


This refers explicitly to a DOM descendant. Does this mean aria-owns content should explicitly be excluded from this check? For example, should we skip NameFrom: heading in this case?

data:text/html,<article aria-owns="content"></article><div id="content"><h1>Some heading</h1>

Does that also mean we shouldn't consider aria-owns content when doing name computation for a dialog? For example, in this case, do we take first or second as the label of the dialog?

data:text/html,<article aria-owns="first second"><h1 id="second">second</h1></article><h1 id="first">first</h1>

I think we should respect aria-owns for consistency. That means we should be using accessibility descendants.

Co-authored-by: James Teh <jamie@jantrid.net>

Add namefrom:heading again; Will year 6 be the year?

17750f7

github-actions bot added spec:aria spec:accname labels Oct 9, 2025

cookiecrook requested review from accdc, keithamus, pkra and scottaohara October 9, 2025 00:33

cookiecrook added the F2FCandidate Candidate topics for F2F (or Virtual F2F) meeting label Oct 9, 2025

cookiecrook requested a review from rahimabdi October 9, 2025 00:40

spectranaut added this to ARIA Normative PR Tracking Oct 9, 2025

spectranaut moved this to Needs Review in ARIA Normative PR Tracking Oct 9, 2025

spectranaut mentioned this pull request Oct 9, 2025

[accname PR 229] Add nameFrom: heading to AccName text alt algorithm #2209

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backing out the region and form role changes based circumstances outl…

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…ined in the PR comment thread

cookiecrook commented Oct 13, 2025

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cookiecrook mentioned this pull request Oct 13, 2025

[html-aam PR 529] Addition: Name from heading #2215

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jnurthen added the Agenda label Oct 16, 2025

m. hyphenation

b19f0b9

Co-authored-by: Rahim Abdi <abdi.abdirahim@gmail.com>

m. article typo based on the prior change from IDDFS to DFS.

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Co-authored-by: Rahim Abdi <abdi.abdirahim@gmail.com>

html aam updates for name from heading

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This commit supersedes PR #2215

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cookiecrook requested a review from rahimabdi October 21, 2025 17:57

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Co-authored-by: James Teh <jamie@jantrid.net>

Add namefrom: heading. #2650

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